Free Republic

Anyone still think China "Most Favored Nation" decision was right? Also, read Bill Clinton's statement in defense of it in 1993. Does anyone think Clinton and the Congressman who supported it were right? From Yahoo:LINFEN, China (AFP) – Christians in north China are facing a Christmas of fear after 10 local religious leaders were jailed in recent weeks and their new church shut down amid a crackdown on unauthorised worship.Five of the church leaders were given prison terms of up to seven-years by a Linfen court, while the others were sentenced without trial to labour camps for two years, their...

TRUNG SON, Vietnam — It seemed as if this village in northern Vietnam had struck gold when a Chinese and a Japanese company arrived to jointly build a coal-fired power plant. Thousands of jobs would start flowing in, or so the residents hoped. Four years later, the Haiphong Thermal Power Plant is nearing completion. But only a few hundred Vietnamese ever got jobs. Most of the workers were Chinese, about 1,500 at the peak. Hundreds of them are still here, toiling by day on the dusty construction site and cloistered at night in dingy dormitories. “The Chinese workers overwhelm the...

Lawmakers and U.S. automakers are peeved with Japan, which has launched a cash-for-clunkers program that doesn’t accept American-made cars. Under Japan’s program, consumers who trade in a car at least 13 years old can get a tax cut of up to $2,800 toward the purchase of a new car. But the program excludes imported vehicles from companies that have low sales in Japan. That covers General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, according to the American Automotive Policy Council, which has pressed the Obama administration for action. U.S. producers are particularly irked since Japanese companies did well under the cash-for-clunkers program Congress...

The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation on Tuesday to impose sanctions on foreign companies that help supply gasoline to Iran, a move lawmakers hope will deter Tehran from pursuing its nuclear program. The bill authorizes President Barack Obama to levy sanctions on energy companies that directly provide gasoline to Iran along with the firms that provide insurance and tankers to facilitate the fuel shipments. The Senate is likely to approve a similar bill, but it is uncertain how soon it will vote.

Trade Data Points To L-Shaped Outlook by: Wildebeest December 13, 2009 At first glance the contraction in the trade deficit for October looks positive. I'm generally wary of seasonally adjusted data -- not because seasonal effects don't exist but because I prefer to see the raw data and the algorithm used to do the smoothing. Non seasonally adjusted data for the trade in goods is available here. A seasonal plot of the trade deficit, derived from 22 years of data, is shown in the next chart. From that chart we see that October is typically a larger deficit month. That...

New claims for unemployment benefits rose more than analysts expected last week, while an unexpected narrowing in the trade gap in October provided some indication that the U.S. economy is steadily growing. First-time claims for jobless benefits rose 17,000 last week, reaching 474,000 in total. This came after the number had declined for five weeks in a row, according to the Labor Department. The upward spike in claims is being blamed on seasonal layoffs in construction and similar industries and on the number of applications that had been held back from processing during the week of Thanksgiving. Analysts who had...

China, the world's largest maker and consumer of steel products, fired back Thursday at the United States for its anti-dumping measures against Chinese steel exports, launching its own punitive taxes on steel from US as well as Russia. The Ministry of Commerce said Thursday on its website that US and Russian steelmakers must pay anti-dumping duties as high as 25 percent beginning today. The US steel industry must also tack on a 12 percent tax when it exports its products to China. The announcement comes after a series of damaging measures against Chinese steel exports launched by the US and...

Nobody can see the future but I’ll take my best stab at it -- here’s hoping I’m not just sticking my foot in my mouth. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. The following predictions should hopefully be very controversial -- just like many of the predictions in my book Discover the Upside of Down. All of my contrarian predictions are based on how I see things setting up the weekly charts in stocks, oil, gold, currencies, commodities, foreign markets, and bonds. I’ll also throw in some specific possible catalysts that could ignite these very powerful setups as they appear...

The Powers of Congress, Article I section viii from the Confederate States Constitution includes a strong statement against protectionism: "nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry" I think it's interesting to compare this with McCain's S.Amdt.279 to ARRA, "To prohibit the applicability of Buy American requirements in the Act to the utilization of funds provided by the Act." McCain's amendment would essentially gut the [protectionist] Buy American provision, so his amendment is in line with the Confederate States Constitution. I wondered if the votes on the...

Talk Is Cheap, Mr. President....

Australian Senate Reaction to Climatgate Could Impact Cap & Trade in U.S. The news that the world's leading climate science institutions had been collaborating internationally for many years in a systematic and ruthless scientific and financial fraud by which they altered, suppressed, reprocessed, concealed, and conspired to destroy the data on which the world's temperature records are based has come as a wake up call to politicians previously slumbering.

The world has changed; but China has not. China has responded to the world financial crisis with what seems to be great success. But this is an illusion. China’s solution – a surge in spending on investment – will create greater excess capacity. China’s high-savings, high-investment economy is costly for its people and destabilising for the world. The time for a radical reform is long past. In a disturbing new report, the European Chamber of Commerce in China lays out the challenge in six sectors: aluminium, where the capacity utilisation rate is forecast to be 67 per cent in 2009;...

November 29, 2009 ECONOMIC VIEW Dangers of an Overheated China By TYLER COWEN PRESIDENT OBAMA’S recent trip to China reflects a symbiotic relationship at the heart of the global economy: China uses American spending power to enlarge its private sector, while America uses Chinese lending power to expand its public sector. Yet this arrangement may unravel in a dangerous way, and if it does, the most likely culprit will be Chinese economic overcapacity. Several hundred million Chinese peasants have moved from the countryside to the cities over the last 30 years, in one of the largest, most rapid migrations in...

Cap and Trade: A License Required for your HomeFrank M. Carrio, CMI ESOP Committee Member 11/3/09, 12:29 AM We encourage you to read the provisions of the Cap and Trade Bill that has passed the House of Representatives and being considered by the Senate. We are ready to join the next march on Washington! This Congress and whoever on their staffs that write this junk are truly out to destroy the middle class of the USA.... A License Required for your house Thinking about selling your house - A look at H.R. 2454 (Cap and trade bill) This is unbelievable!...

Facing rising unemployment and slipping poll numbers, Obama assured the public that creating new jobs...

A new Gallup poll finds that 51 percent of Americans see the weak economy or high unemployment as their biggest concerns. Barely 3 percent mention the environment. And Democrats have been unable to sell cap-and-trade as a job creator. At worst, the public sees it as a jobs killer or a costly energy tax. That charge has particular weight in Reid’s home state, Nevada, a high energy-use state. (All those air conditioners!) So Reid doesn’t want to have to vote for it, which he would be compelled to do as majority leader. And neither do moderates like MaryLandrieu, Blanche Lincoln,...

Obama to Warn Asia Against Relying on U.S. Consumers By JONATHAN WEISMAN and YUKA HAYASHI [President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday.] AFP/Getty Images President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama hold a press conference at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on Friday. TOKYO -- President Barack Obama has come halfway around the world to personally deliver the message to East Asia that the global economy can no longer count on the U.S. consumer to keep it afloat. In what White House aides call a "major...

All the talk in Washington is surrounding a government health insurance plan, but there’s a little discussed insurance plan in the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade bill that’s worth some attention. The Senate version of the cap and trade bill includes a section that grants the President the authority to “direct relevant federal agencies” to impose additional greenhouse gas regulations. Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and John Barrasso (R-WY) have been working assiduously to uncover the true costs of cap and trade legislation. Greenhouse gas concentrations are measured in parts per million (ppm). Many global warming alarmists believe that upper limit on...

Repeat After Me.... "There Is No Carry"The Market TickerTuesday, November 10. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Editorial at 10:45 From this morning's open (there have been many essentially-identical charts over the last months...) You can argue anything you'd like, but this - the chart of the SPX cash and the dollar, overlaid - put the lie to any claim that "there is no carry" at play. Today, as with many days before (and I'm sure will be since) is stunning evidence that indeed there is a monstrous carry being perpetrated against the dollar and our nation, Bernanke knows it,...

With what looks like imminent passage of the Mother of All Bailouts (following on the heels of a year’s worth of government-funded rescues of private homeowners, lenders, insurers and automakers), Washington has turned Aesop’s famous fable about prudence and hard work on its head. The time is ripe for a revised 2008 edition of “The Ant and the Grasshopper:”

China Wind Power U.S. Commerce Sec. Says China to Lift Local Mfg. Rule By Sam Hopkins Friday, October 30th, 2009 United States Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said on Thursday that China is moving to allow more parts from foreign manufacturers to be included in the Middle Kingdom's domestic wind power projects. As it stands, Beijing requires that 70% of the components in wind energy turbines erected around China be produced by factories within the country. Locke couldn't say exactly when the rule would change, but after the 20th U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, America's top industrial diplomat did...

It is not a secret to any of us that the United Nations Charter is simply the Communist Manifesto which had be modified and adapted for the vindictive expedience of transferring the wealth from the people living who are living world leaders such as the United States to the Socialist elites. We’ve all seen the faces and the bare-naked bodies of impoverished children who had been exploited for this kind of extortion. These organizations are always operated and promoted by the elites such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, but the impoverished people who are shown on their posters and...

Lord Christopher Monckton has been making the rounds, warning against the December Copenhagen climate change conference and their proposed legislation to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Treaty. Monckton - not only known as Margaret Thatcher's advisor, but as a clarion skeptic on the global warming propaganda machine - appeared on Fox News Happy Hour a couple of days ago. It ended with co-host, Rebecca Diamond, subtly expressing her disbelief at the end of the interview that Obama and the world leaders could possibly be involved in such nefarious doin's. On the same tangent today is Jeffrey T. Kuhner of the Washington...

LOS ANGELES, Oct 20 - Foreman Danny Miranda remembers the days when the Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, ports were so jammed that ships waited in line to unload. Now the lingering recession has longshoremen waiting in line for work. After a year of grappling with fewer shifts and falling wages, Miranda and other union port workers hope a surprise jump in September retail sales will fuel a late-season bump in holiday cargo. "Out of seven days, only two we see work. The last quarter it would be four days out of the seven," said Miranda, a veteran port...

After reported currency intervention by Asian economies and Brazil, Europe today reiterated its desire for a strong dollar as well. Bloomberg: French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s counselor, Henri Guaino, said today in Paris that the U.S. is “flooding the world” with dollars and that the currency’s weakness may become “unbearable.” Eric Woerth, France’s budget minister, said the euro’s gains are hurting the region’s competitiveness.“We all note with considerable attention the statements made by American authorities as regards their support in favor of a strong dollar,” Trichet said in Luxembourg yesterday....“We want a strong dollar; we need a strong dollar,” French Finance...

Container Trade in TEUs* 2009 Year-to-Date*TEUs: 20-foot equivalent units or 20-foot-long cargo container **Preliminary estimate   Loaded Inbound Loaded Outbound Empties Total Containers January 200,588 88,510 110,197 399,295 February 149,299 92,781 75,962 318,042 March 186,450 117,674 70,007 374,131 April 199,051 112,976 96,678 408,705 May 208,591 121,064 89,900 419,555 June 206,358 114,107 92,882 413,347 July 221,719 108,420 102,874 433,013 August 249,920 130,623 112,796 493,339 September 224,924 109,337 106,103 440,364 October November December Year-to-Date 1,846,900 995,492 857,399 3,699,791 YTD % Change -23.8% -26.3% -24.2% -24.6%

Sarah Palin wants to sell some books. She is giving an interview to Oprah Winfrey that will air Monday, Nov. 16. Winfrey has the golden touch when it comes to pushing books. The Winfrey folks called the interview a "world exclusive." It will be Palin's first interview to promote her book, "Going Rogue: An American Life." And people said this meeting would never happen! What do you think about this? The interview will air during the important November ratings period, so Palin should help Winfrey, too. That's how the book business works, folks. The interview will be Palin's first appearance...

Free Trade: Europe just walked off with the second-biggest trade deal in history with South Korea, bringing a fresh $26 billion to both economies and extending their clout globally. It's a prize that could have been ours. Welcome to the new America, the land of the left behind. As the Obama administration dithers for the eighth straight month about three pending free-trade treaties, those dust clouds you see are Europe taking off and running with the big one — South Korea. Late Thursday, Europe completed a free-trade pact with Korea in which 99% of all tariffs will be scrapped within...

National Security: On the eve of a visit by China's No. 2 ranking military officer, the Obama administration loosens export controls on technology that will benefit Chinese missile development. It's deja vu all over again. The Pentagon has announced that Chinese Gen. Xu Caihou will visit the United States and meet with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Oct. 26. Xu is vice chairman of the People's Liberation Army Central Military Commission. While here, Xu will visit American military installations around the U.S., including the U.S. Pacific Command. Perhaps Xu will bring with him a note of thanks for the administration's...

Speaking before the Senate energy panel Oct. 14, the head of the Congressional Budget Office said that the cap-and-trade system included in the House bill would slow domestic economic growth slightly over the next few decades. By 2020, the nation’s gross domestic product may be off 0.25 to 0.75 percent, and by 1-3.5 percent by 2050, said CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf. Elmendorf noted that his estimates involve uncertainties and “do not include any benefits from averting climate change,” reports the Washington Post. President Obama and congressional Democratic leaders, by contrast, have said that a cap on carbon emissions would boost...

press boxThe FTC's Mad Power Grab The commission's preposterous new endorsement guidelines.By Jack ShaferPosted Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009, at 6:29 PM ET If you're a blogger and you write about goods or services—and what blogger doesn't write about books, movies, music, theater, restaurants, home theaters, laptops, manicures, clothing, tutoring, bicycles, cars, boats, cameras, strollers, watches, lawn care, pharmaceuticals, gourmet food, maid service, hair care, concerts, banking, shipping, or septic tank service from time to time?—then you've just made yourself vulnerable to an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission.In new guidelines (PDF) released Oct. 5, the FTC put bloggers on notice...

China's trade surplus shrinks to $12.9 billion in September Falling surpluses point to end of China's role as `dollar recycler,' analyst says By Chris Oliver, MarketWatch HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- China's trade surplus contracted in September at a faster-than-expected pace, as the gap between what the nation sells to and buys from the world continued to shrink. Analysts said the report adds to evidence that the country will swing to a trade deficit early next year. China's trade surplus in September totaled $12.9 billion, down about 56% from a year earlier. Median market expectations were for a surplus of $15.8...

[snip]In case anybody checked, the dollar's path has been steadily downward since the early years of the administration of George W. Bush. And, notwithstanding the bleating you hear about the battered buck, that's just fine with Wall Street. According to Barclays Capital, "since 2003, dollar weakness has gone hand-in-hand with equity rallies." The bank's economists estimate currency depreciation helped to reduce the trade deficit, which added 1.1 percentage points to gross domestic product growth in the first half of 2009 from a year earlier. From the stock market's perspective, Barclays Capital notes in its U.S. Portfolio Strategy weekly letter that...

The new World Trade Center, now under construction, is often considered a symbol of American enterprise. But to some union members and U.S. businesses, it represents what's wrong with the nation's economy. The contract to manufacture the blast-resistant glass wrapping the main tower's first 20 stories was awarded earlier this year to a Chinese firm that underbid U.S. competitors. Now the trade tensions between the United States and China that have arisen recently over tires, steel and paper are spreading to glass. "This new tower is going to be made out of subsidized Chinese glass, putting factory workers out of...

Maj. Gen. Isam Salih Yaseen, Zurbatiyah Port director, Department of Border Enforcement, cuts the ribbon to represent the opening of the Cargo Transload Area on the Iraq-Iran border at the Zurbatiyah Point of Entry, Sept. 26. The CTLA border facility enables safe commerce between the two countries. Photo by Pfc. Bethany Little, 172nd Infantry Brigade. ZURBATIYAH — Work to improve commerce and security in Iraq continued as a Cargo Transload Area (CTLA) opened here along the Iraq-Iran border, Sept. 26. The $5.3 million project was a combined effort by Border Transition Team 4351, Task Force Drifter, Point of Entry Team,...

Now that the Senate has returned from its August recess, its members have many issues with which to contend. Although health care reform has received much of the attention in recent weeks, another bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454) or more widely known as Waxman-Markey or “cap & trade,” is equally deserving of scrutiny. This is because most major economic impact studies demonstrate that the “cap & trade” scheme proposed in the Waxman-Markey bill will create massive consumer costs with undefined environmental benefits. In June, the Waxman-Markey bill narrowly passed the U.S. House 219-212...

The United States has been hollowed out. It no longer manufactures goods. Once the factory of the world, the U.S. now manufactures debt. The high wage manufacturing jobs have been out-sourced to low wage economies. The demise of U.S. manufacturing is at the core of the decline of America, its chronic trade deficits and growing international indebtedness. It makes the world’s savers reluctant to be exposed to the U.S. dollar.There is one problem with this widely held view: It is factually wrong.The value of U.S. manufacturing output in real terms (adjusted for inflation) was a little more than $3 trillion...

Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Americas Everett Eissenstat told a crowd at the Americans Conference that work was progressing on free trade agreements with both Panama and Colombia, though ``less tangible'' concerns about violence and impunity in Colombia have yet to be fully resolved. ``I don't think anyone even in Colombia is happy with the status quo,'' Eissenstat said in an interview with The Miami Herald following an address at the Americas Conference in Coral Gables. ``The Colombian government is undertaking tremendous reforms on its own initiative and I think that is indicative that they feel there is additional...

After seven Democratic presidential candidates debated on Nov. 15, CNN treated us to a debate of eight Republican hopefuls on Nov. 28. The transcript of the debate numbers 25 pages. Its first major subject is “illegal immigration,” which runs to Page 10, or about a third of the debate. Illegal immigration? The word “state” in the political sense (as in “the United States of America”) implies that foreigners cannot come to and live in a “state” as they could on land owned by no one. Otherwise, the “USA” should have been called “NOLA,” “No One’s Lands of America.” Nineteen foreigners...

China: More Trade Tensions 2 comments by: Michael Pettis September 25, 2009 | about: FXI / PSJ While the G20 leaders make reassuring noises about international trade, I think the risk of rising trade tensions have not abated at all. As I see it, everything depends on whether or not domestic Chinese polices had any role in creating the global imbalances, and if they did, then we are still in the early stages of a difficult process of assigning the costs of the global adjustment through trade. Beijing hates when anyone suggests that Chinese policies were partly at fault for...

HONG KONG -- A trade tiff over tires may escalate into a full-fledged trade war, with American unions taking on Asian exporters. Three American paper companies, joined by the union that represents their workers, charged on Wednesday that unfair trade practices in China and Indonesia have cost thousands of Americans their jobs by driving down the cost of paper. The three companies plus the United Steelworkers (USW) union submitted petitions to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission (ITC). They claimed that certain types of coated paper imported from China and Indonesia have eliminated thousands of American...

The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination - and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year The tropical waters that lap the jungle shores of southern Malaysia could not be described as a paradisical shimmering turquoise. They are more of a dark, soupy green. They also carry a suspicious smell. Not that this is of any concern to the lone Indian face...

Two weeks ago, both the administration and the Fed announced with straight faces that the recession was over and the signs of economic recovery were clear. Then last week, the president made a stunning decision that signals the administration’s determination to repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression. Much like the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs that set off a global trade war and effectively doomed us to ten more years of economic misery, Obama’s decision to enact steep tariffs on Chinese imported tires could spark a trade war with the single most important trading partner we have. Not only does China manufacture...

Willard PARIS (Reuters) - Persuading Europe, the United States and China to accept International Monetary Fund advice on economic polices may be difficult, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said on Monday. The United States wants a discussion of a broad framework to solve the world's economic imbalances at a summit of G20 leaders in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday. The IMF would be charged with sketching out a plan and then checking whether each country was making progress. But in the past many countries have ignored advice dished out in regular reviews by the IMF. G7 sources told Reuters...

Explaining Two Trade Busts: Output VS. Trade Costs In The Great Depression And Today Douglas L. Campbell David Jacks Christopher M. Meissner Dennis Novy 19 September 2009 Trade has declined massively during the crisis. This column assesses the relative roles of falling demand and rising trade costs in explaining the collapse and compares it to the Great Depression. Surprising, the increase in trade costs today is as large as in 1929, despite the absence of any modern protectionism resembling Smoot-Hawley. It appears that reviving global demand alone will be insufficient to revive world trade. If the world economy is now...

Earlier today, Doug Bandow weighed in with some commentary on the problems that Buy American provisions are creating for both Canadian and American businesses. Let me reinforce his view that such rules are anachronistic and self-defeating with some thoughts from a forthcoming paper of mine about the incongruity between modern commercial reality and trade policies that have failed to keep pace. Even though President Obama implored, “If you are considering buying a car, I hope it will be an American car,” it is nearly impossible to determine objectively what makes an American car. The auto industry provides a famous example,...

Cuba's foreign minister on Wednesday lashed out at US President Barack Obama for keeping in place a crushing, 47-year-old trade embargo against the communist island, despite having recently eased travel and money transfer restrictions. "The economic blockade policy remains in place," complained Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, as he unveiled a report to be presented to the United Nations General Assembly on the negative impact of the embargo. "The arrival of a new US president has not meant any change at all" for Cuba Rodriguez said.

European and Asian markets fell Monday, shaken by news of a trade dispute between the U.S. and China over tariffs on tires. Germany's DAX fell 1.4 percent to 5,544.71 and Britain's FTSE 100 lost 1.0 percent at 4,962.90. France's CAC-40 shed 1.4 percent to 3,683.72. Asian indexes lost as much as 2 percent and Wall Street was expected to fall later. Dow industrials futures were down 81 points at 9,450.00 and Standard & Poor's 500 futures slipped 9.90 points to 1,027.40. The U.S. decision to impose trade penalties on Chinese tires infuriated Beijing, which condemned the move as protectionist and...

BRUSSELS -- This weekend's U.S.-China trade skirmish is just the tip of a coming protectionist iceberg, according to a report released Monday by Global Trade Alert, a team of trade analysts backed by independent think tanks, the World Bank and the U.K. government. A report by the World Trade Organization, backed by its 153 members and also released Monday, found "slippage" in promises to abstain from protectionism, but drew less dramatic conclusions. (Read the report.) Governments have planned 130 protectionist measures that have yet to be implemented, according to the GTA's research. These include state aid funds, higher tariffs, immigration...